Judd Vinet, a Canadian programmer and occasional guitarist, began developing Arch Linux in early 2001. Its first formal release, Arch Linux 0.1, was on March 11, 2002. Inspired by the elegant simplicity of Slackware, Polish Linux Distribution, and CRUX, and yet disappointed with the lack of package management; Vinet built his own distribution on similar principles as those distros. But, he also wrote a package management program called pacman, to automatically handle package installation, removal, and upgrades.

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Judd Vinet, a Canadian programmer and occasional guitarist, began developing Arch Linux in early 2001. Its first formal release, Arch Linux 0.1, was on March 11, 2002. Inspired by the elegant simplicity of [http://www.slackware.com/ Slackware], [http://www.pld-linux.org/ Polish Linux Distribution], and [http://crux.nu/ CRUX], and yet disappointed with their lack of package management at the time; Vinet built his own distribution on similar principles as those distros. But, he also wrote a package management program called [[pacman]], to automatically handle package installation, removal, and upgrades.

==The middle years==

==The middle years==

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The early Arch community grew steadily, as evidenced by [http://dev.archlinux.org/~dan/archgrowth.png this chart of forum posts, users, and bug reports]. Moreover, it was from its early days known as [http://www.osnews.com/story/4827 an open, friendly, and helpful community].

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The early Arch community grew steadily, as evidenced by [https://dev.archlinux.org/~dan/archstats.svg this chart of forum posts, users, and bug reports]. Moreover, it was from its early days known as [http://www.osnews.com/story/4827 an open, friendly, and helpful community].

==The dawning of the age of A. Griffin==

==The dawning of the age of A. Griffin==

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In late 2007, Judd Vinet retired from active participation as an Arch developer, and [http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=38024 smoothly transferred the reins over to American sysadmin Aaron Griffin], aka Phrakture, who remains the lead Arch developer to this day.

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In late 2007, Judd Vinet retired from active participation as an Arch developer, and [https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=38024 smoothly transferred the reins over to American programmer Aaron Griffin], aka Phrakture, who remains the lead Arch developer to this day.

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Over the years, the Arch community continued to grow and mature, and has recently received an unsual amount of [[Arch Linux Press Review|attention and review]] for a Linux distro of its modest size.

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Over the years, the Arch community continued to grow and mature, and has recently received an unusual amount of [[Arch Linux Press Review|attention and review]] for a Linux distro of its modest size.

Arch developers remain unpaid, part-time volunteers, and there are no prospects for monetizing Arch Linux, so it will remain free in all senses of the word. Those curious to peruse more detail about Arch's development history can browse the [http://web.archive.org/web/*/archlinux.org Arch entry in the Internet Archive Wayback Machine].

Arch developers remain unpaid, part-time volunteers, and there are no prospects for monetizing Arch Linux, so it will remain free in all senses of the word. Those curious to peruse more detail about Arch's development history can browse the [http://web.archive.org/web/*/archlinux.org Arch entry in the Internet Archive Wayback Machine].

Revision as of 14:47, 3 December 2012

The early years

Judd Vinet, a Canadian programmer and occasional guitarist, began developing Arch Linux in early 2001. Its first formal release, Arch Linux 0.1, was on March 11, 2002. Inspired by the elegant simplicity of Slackware, Polish Linux Distribution, and CRUX, and yet disappointed with their lack of package management at the time; Vinet built his own distribution on similar principles as those distros. But, he also wrote a package management program called pacman, to automatically handle package installation, removal, and upgrades.

Over the years, the Arch community continued to grow and mature, and has recently received an unusual amount of attention and review for a Linux distro of its modest size.

Arch developers remain unpaid, part-time volunteers, and there are no prospects for monetizing Arch Linux, so it will remain free in all senses of the word. Those curious to peruse more detail about Arch's development history can browse the Arch entry in the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.